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<title>scarred hearts (still beat) by Phoenix_Allura (Artemis_Autumn_Marie)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579774">scarred hearts (still beat)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Autumn_Marie/pseuds/Phoenix_Allura'>Phoenix_Allura (Artemis_Autumn_Marie)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nix's Whumptober 2019 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Memories, Mild hurt, POV Minho, Scars, Thinking, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, thominho - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:53:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579774</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Autumn_Marie/pseuds/Phoenix_Allura</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Whumptober Day 15: Scars<br/>Minho has hope that one day, these scars won't hurt so much.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minho/Thomas (Maze Runner)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nix's Whumptober 2019 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1507226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>scarred hearts (still beat)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Minho can’t see how far the scars stretch across his back or the tattoo <em>(brand)</em> on his neck, but he can feel Thomas’s light touches when he thinks Minho’s sleeping.<br/>
He can see the lightning marks on his chest, his legs, still pink.<br/>
Still fresh.<br/>
The faded scars from the Maze, they seem a thousand years old.<br/>
Minho feels that old, sometimes.<br/>
He knows that someday these, too, will fade, will seem like they’ve been there a hundred years but now? Now they pull and they ache and they hurt and they inhibit his movement on the worst days. They remind him of the trembling in Thomas’s too-loud voice when he’d realized, after that storm, that he couldn’t hear.<br/>
He’d had a panic attack at the thought and Minho had been conscious, in pain, unable to move, and couldn’t help him.<br/>
That had hurt more than any wound.<br/>
(Thomas would tell him, years later, that he thought seeing Minho, burned and halfway to seizing and out of it and unsteady was the worst memory he had, because he’d had to stand back and watch. Because there was nothing he could do.<br/>
Minho told him it was funny that their worst memories were only a few minutes apart.)<br/>
Minho’s scars remind him of how Thomas had been shaking when Minho asked, just the other night, if Thomas would tell him what had happened during the storm.<br/>
Minho doesn’t remember much of it; he remembers taunting Jorge and the pain but not the storm itself, and he remembers the panic, panic that had surged right past the pain and skipped ‘scared’; he remembers the tightness in his chest when he realized Thomas was gone, separated from them.<br/>
When he thought Thomas could be dead.<br/>
(He hadn’t known then how soon he would think Thomas dead, again and again.<br/>
How much worse it would be the second, the third, the fourth time.)<br/>
He remembers how it was worse, almost, when they got him back.<br/>
The joy, simply knowing Thomas was safe…<br/>
Only for him to be shot.<br/>
And taken by WICKED again.<br/>
Thomas came back with shaking hands, a puckered scar on his shoulder, and implants designed to let him hear again.<br/>
Thomas hadn’t wanted those.<br/>
He said they’d kept him under, most of the time, but he’d woken up and started screaming the middle of surgery.<br/>
Twice.<br/>
(He had a line, diagonal down his arm, from that, and now he often got migraines bad enough where he’d begged for Minho to knock him out.)<br/>
Minho can feel the scars on the back of his head, from where they removed WICKED’s implants.<br/>
Those don’t bother him.<br/>
They happened because he was getting out of WICKED’s hands, away from their control, and he wouldn’t heal them if he could.<br/>
Some scars you keep, and these were Minho’s.<br/>
(He knows Thomas would rather get rid of all his scars, get rid of the hearing implants, and just be done with it.<br/>
But it doesn’t work like that.)<br/>
The physical scars will fade. His and Thomas’s will be nothing but lines in a few years, and they won’t hurt anymore.<br/>
Watching Thomas sleep, struggling to sleep himself, Minho wonders if the hack-job WICKED did in their minds will ever heal.<br/>
If someday Thomas will touch a hand to his ear without flinching, if Minho can forget the sickening feeling he’d had once he realized WICKED regarded them as property, only property, rather than people, teenagers, who needed anything but what they were given.<br/>
If they can ever forget what it’s like to be scared, constantly, for their lives, for everyone around them.<br/>
Thomas moves in his sleep, curling into Minho, resting one side of his head against Minho’s chest.<br/>
Three weeks ago, he wouldn’t have done that, even in sleep.<br/>
So maybe, maybe, there was hope.<br/>
Maybe someday, all their scars would well and truly fade.<br/>
(Maybe someday this would all seem like nothing more than a bad dream.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey everyone!<br/>It's me again, back with yet another Thominho fic.<br/>Let me know what you thought!<br/>As always,<br/>Nix</p></blockquote></div></div>
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